Standard Chartered Bank has postponed its prediction for the $20 trillion stablecoin market to 2030

Standard Chartered Bank, in a report released on Wednesday, has postponed its prediction for the stablecoin market to reach a scale of $2 trillion from 2028 to 2030. Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital asset research, stated that the $2 trillion scale estimate remains unchanged, but he believes the market will need an additional two years to reach it. Over the past 12 months, the supply of stablecoins has remained in the range of $300 billion to $320 billion, currently approximately $309 billion. Kendrick believes this slowdown is cyclical rather than structural, as it occurs during a period of weak activity in the cryptocurrency market.

Kendrick pointed out that despite the stagnation in supply growth, the use and trading activity of stablecoins continue to rise. The on-chain original transfer amount set a monthly record of $19 trillion in May, with an average monthly scale of nearly $10 trillion this year, surpassing $4 trillion in 2025. The monthly average circulation velocity, which measures the number of times each dollar of stablecoin changes hands, has doubled this year to about 30 times, compared to 15 times in 2025, with USDT maintaining around 7 times and USDC rising from 45 times to about 80 times. Kendrick stated that the differences stem from different uses, with USDT primarily used for dollar savings in emerging markets, while USDC is more used for payments, financial transactions, and early payments between AI agents.

Kendrick expects that competition in the stablecoin payment and trading space in developed markets will be the most intense, with potential challengers including Open USD, stablecoin infrastructure provider M^0, and the A+ Network, which plans to allow banks to issue shared stablecoins and retain reserve earnings.